However the system's use is not limited to large corporations only: With 101tec, Zanox, nugg.ad, nurago also local German players are using the project to enable new applications. Add components like Lucene, Redis, CouchDB, HBase and UIMA to the mix and you end up with a set of majour open source components that allow developers to rapidly develop systems that until a few years ago were possible only either in Google-like companies or in research.

The Berlin Apache Hadoop Get Together started in 2008 allowed to learn more on how the average local company leveraged this software. It is a platform to get in touch informally, exchange knowledge and best practices across corporate boundaries.

After three years of organising that event it is time to hand it over to new caring hands: David Obermann from Idealo kindly volunteered to take over organisation. He is a long-term attendee of the event and will continue it in the roughly the same spirit as before: Technical talks on success stories by users, new features by developers - not solely restricted to Hadoop only but also taking into account related projects.

A huge Thank You for taking up the work of co-ordinating, finding a venue and a sponsor for the videos goes to David! If any of you attending the event think that you have an interesting story to share, would like to support the event financially or just help out please get in touch with David.

Looking forward to the next Apache Hadoop Get Together Berlin. Watch this space for updates on when and where it will take place.